Monday, March 25, 2019

Purple Dress

I have been participating in a sewing challenge called "Sew that pattern now" during the month of March. Emi, Olga and Mijke encouraged people to sew with the patterns and fabrics that have been sitting in your closet or sewing room forever and just get it done. I am totally guilty of having such stacks and I decided to join the fun and knock some projects off my list. It is actually really motivating and fun to go through my stash of fabrics and patterns and finally do some. I made other garments, but this dress is the only one that I took picture of with a real camera and I decided to write a blog post. I promise that later I will upload pictures from my phone and share other clothing I made.

I used linen blend I bought years ago in San Jose. for the longest time, I couldn't decide what to make with it, but I am really happy with how it turned out. The pattern I used is from one of my Japanese sewing books.

I love the pleats and V-neck on this dress and I am thinking about making it with different colors (yes... I have more fabrics in my closet. This is what happens when you shop faster than you sew!).

I was suppose to have surgery done at the end of this month, but last Friday, the doctor's office called and they needed me to reschedule my surgery to the beginning of next month. To be honest, I was pretty annoyed about this at first because that would affect everyone's schedule around here. Also, I thought I wuold be recovering, I didn't plan our Spring Break trip, otherwise we would have been on the road. :( But, now I am thinking I can sew a little bit longer before the surgery and organize my house too. Do you think I can squeeze in some more projects??

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Accidental Baby Quilt

Have you seen the cute fabric line Gretel designed by my sweet friend Amy Smart for Riley Blake designs? I had a chance to work with them and I made a quilt top a few weeks ago. What? the quilt up above? NO. That isn't it. The picture below is the quilt top I made first. For some reasons, my dog always shows up from nowhere when I start taking pictures of my quilt and gets in the pictures. Sorry if you are not a doggy lover. ;) It is not quilted yet, but I love how it turned out. I made it up as I went along, which is great, but because it wasn't planned nor did I follow a pattern, I had some left over blocks. I hate to waste so many blocks, so I started playing with them and kept switching things up to see the design potential... and pieced them together...


and ta-da! This baby quilt was born.

I was so happy how it turned out and got carried away. I hand quilted it, decided to do scalloped edges, and embroidered some red motif on it.

Sometimes you can come up with something fun and unexpected when you go with the flow and just let it happen. My baby sister is pregnant with her first baby and I am crossing my fingers that the baby is a girl, so this aunt can ship this quilt to Japan!